Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but could never carry a tune or keep rhythm. I suppose its what being dyslexic feels like. If I were educated in a culture where music was fundamentally as important as reading or math, I suppose would have spent enough hours on it to eventually be passable... but I got frustrated, the music lessons stopped. But that doesn't mean I stopped appreciating or wanting to make music!

And then comes Suno (and OpenAI's jukebox before that), and it felt like my brain exploded... like the classic scene in a superhero movie when the power was given to me. Is my music good? No - but I spent years writing and fashioning poetry and all of a sudden can put that to music... hard to explain how awesome that feels. and i love using the tools and it's getting better and it's been fundamentally empowering. I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar".

https://open.spotify.com/album/45CY60A8GCHxBQb7DCJsIl

https://songxytr.substack.com/p/what-is-a-songxytr

Guitar, make it sound more like someone else's hard work.

I see it as like having the answer key to every homework assignment for a course. It's easy to convince yourself that it doesn't hurt learning -- but there's probably a reason the answers aren't given to you. The struggle, the experience of "being stuck", the ability to understand why things don't work -- may be necessary precursors to true understanding. We're seeing pretty discouraging results from people who are learning to "vibe code" without an understanding of how they would write the code themselves.

You may wish that learning Suno is no different than learning guitar, but I think the effects of AI may be a bit pernicious, and lead to a stagnation that takes a while to truly be felt. Nobody can say one way or the other yet. That said, I'm happy you can make music that you enjoy, and that Suno enables you to do it. Such tools are at their best when they're helping people like you.